The Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland HSE(NI) has published its new Corporate Plan for the 2018-2023 period.

The Corporate Plan is regarded as ‘draft’ as it cannot be endorsed and ‘signed-off’ in the absence of a Minister due to the Northern Ireland Assembly currently being ‘suspended’ following a breakdown in power-sharing negotiations between the leading political parties in the province.

However, the HSE(NI) Board has agreed the Corporate Plan following a public consultation which drew widespread positive support. Given the overwhelmingly positive support received at consultation, HSE(NI) will use the ‘draft’ Corporate Plan document to set the priorities and strategic direction for the organisation until the NI Assembly and Executive is restored and a Minister for the Economy is in place to consider the draft.

In the Corporate Plan, HSE(NI) has set out its mission ‘to work with others to reduce serious work-related injury and ill health’. Strategically, HSE(NI) will focus on preventing the most serious workplace health and safety issues in high risk industries and activities.

In addition, for a number of years HSE(NI) has been increasing its activity and focus on occupational health issues. Given the potential short and long term costs to workers and to the economy from ill-health at work, the Corporate Plan represents a step change in activity in this important area which is devastating many lives and costing the Northern Ireland economy over £238m every year.

HSE(NI) is committed to improving health and safety standards across all work sectors in Northern Ireland and has identified three main overlapping themes on which they will focus their work during this corporate plan period. Over the lifetime of the Corporate Plan, HSE(NI), working with others, plans to achieve the following three key outcomes:-

Reduce Serious and Fatal Accidents by 10% to no more than 50 per annum on average;

Reduce Major Accidents by 10% to no more than 350 per annum on average; and

Reduce Over 3 Day Accidents by 5% to no more than 1700 per annum on average

HSE(NI) sees these three targets as challenging and in large part being dependent on the health and safety performance of other parties. This underscores the fact that this Corporate Plan represents a shared vision between HSE(NI), NI employers and NI employees. In addition, this draft Plan focuses on a sector based approach and specifies the challenges and priorities in key industry sectors.

HSE(NI) ran a public consultation exercise from 6 April to 29 June 2018.

HSE(NI) we will focus on those work activities that pose the highest risk and the causes of serious and fatal accidents. They state that underpinning the strategy’s approach is collaboration and partnership.

They will continue to use the traditional model of workplace inspections by HSE(NI) Inspectors as HSE(NI) know these visits are effective in stopping dangerous activities and bringing about improvements.

The HSE(NI) website, and HSE(NI)’s Communications Team will run campaigns, arrange talks and seminars etc., to bring the key messages to wider audiences and this will continue to be a vital aspect of the Inspectorate’s work in the future.

HSE(NI) will also partner with other regulators and stakeholders to raise awareness and drive improvements in both safety and health across all sectors.

They aim to provide, encourage and support leadership in safety and health in Northern Ireland in order to deliver success.

Finally HSE(NI) state that they will deploy the necessary enforcement action options open to them where the circumstances require it.

There are 124,000 businesses in Northern Ireland and the public sector.